


i could not love thee dear so much

by lavenderlotion



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bittersweet Ending, Dark Charles, F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, M/M, Murder, Not X-Men: Days of Future Past Compliant, Post X-Men: First Class, Telepathic Bond, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:55:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21527110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderlotion/pseuds/lavenderlotion
Summary: They had taken his sister and they were going to pay in their blood.
Relationships: Armando Muñoz/Alex Summers, Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier, Hank McCoy/Raven | Mystique
Comments: 12
Kudos: 62
Collections: Secret Mutant Madness 2019





	i could not love thee dear so much

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [friendlyneighbourhoodteacakes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendlyneighbourhoodteacakes/pseuds/friendlyneighbourhoodteacakes) in the [secret_mutant_madness_2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/secret_mutant_madness_2019) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> For whatever reason, Charles goes 'dark' and wants to kill all the humans/mind control everyone/other dark stuff and Erik is all like, "Oh no. This is not the Charles I want at all." Cue it being up to Erik to talk Charles down. A happy ending would be nice, but is by no means necessary!

The first thing that Charles noticed was the acidic tang of terror wound around the sharper, bitter notes of bloodlust. His mind whirled as his awareness stretched further away from himself. Closing his eyes, Charles pressed two fingers to his temple and took a deep breath. His heart beat erratically against his ribs but refused to calm no matter how many breaths he took, his own fear so heavy along the back of his consciousness. 

“Get me closer,” Charles muttered to Hank, using the fingers pressed to his temple to focus in on what he could feel, tilting his head to the side as though he were tuning a radio. 

Hank said something Charles relegated none of his attention to. His friend’s thoughts were just as fevered as Charles’ and he did his best to pay them no mind. He did not need additional interference. Dimly, Charles was aware of their automobile slowing, however there was not much room left in his mind for such needless minutiae, not when he was already stretched so thin.

The car turned sharply. Charles vaguely felt the pressure of the door against his arm as his body was forced against it. They still were not close enough and each minute that passed without finding anything was causing his irritation to grow into anger. Charles had never done well with anger, and he knew it would not help him now.  _ True focus lies somewhere between rage and serenity _ was something he knew very well. 

Charles expanded his awareness as Hank continued to drive, until there was something along the edge of his focus. He longed for the thrum of Cerebro and the power it granted him. Such strength was heady, and Charles often found that he missed its sweetness. Another long moment of nothing and then—

_ Yes. _ Charles delved into the first mind he came across and found it to be nothing more than a guard. It was so very easy to put him to sleep and use him to get closer—another guard, this one stationed inside a small office. From there, it was all rather simple. 

_ What do you know? What is this base used for? Who is in charge?  _ Charles focused on this mantra of questioning as he jumped from mind to mind, not bothering with putting them to sleep as he had long since become careful enough to slip inside without the consciousness he was within ever knowing. He followed the ever-growing web of thoughts until—

“Ah,” Charles hummed to himself, sharpening his focus at last. Physically, he was aware of their car coming to a stop. Charles’ eyes could not see the building in front of him but he did not need to as he had already slid into the man’s mind, weaving between nonsensical thoughts. He felt much like a predator on the hunt. 

A General. A man following orders. It was only too bad this man  _ wanted _ to be following his orders. Too bad for the man, that was. It had been so very long since Charles had plucked weapon locations from an operative’s mind—the day that had started it all, Charles often thought—and he had been within many different minds in the following years. 

It was easy to find what he needed. The brain could be so simple under his thoughts despite its inherent complexity. Now, diving into this man’s mind felt nothing but natural. Charles was at the very peak of his telepathy, his focus honed as he travelled through the intricate workings of another’s mind. It was with but a simple thought of his own that he was shifting through this man’s thoughts. 

His mind was...not a pleasant place. No matter how many minds Charles found himself inside, it was a rare experience to encounter a person who raised the hairs along his arms and caused his teeth to ache. This man and his thoughts caused Charles to pinch his face up in distaste, even as he moved deeper. If nothing else, there was valuable information that Charles was able to extract, and he relayed the gleaned information of a mutant transport that had taken place the night before to Hank. 

There was only one mutant left in this warehouse. It could only be a blessing, for Charles had allowed no more than himself and Hank to come. The others’ feelings towards Raven were...well, they were surely complex. Sean’s distaste for her and Angel had seemed to sharpen when Darwin returned to them while Alex had been so full of elation and longing and a confused sort of want that he let some of his resentment go without a conscious thought. 

But Raven was his sister, and Hank loved her. Charles had felt her cry for him without even needing Cerebro—their minds would always be connected on some level. That had been nearly a week ago, and Charles had been plagued by fear ever since. The thought of his fear caused a reaction in the General’s mind, though it was not an emotion he often felt himself. 

_ Mutant freak  _ echoed loudly and so suddenly that Charles pulled back. It was the work of a moment to realize the man was dreaming, though his dreams were tinged with the accuracy of truth. He was dreaming of something that had happened, and that dream was tinged with fear that did not belong to him. 

Tumbling through the man’s memory centre, Charles slid between past and present with careful dissonance until he found the memory that inspired the initial thought. He watched, the hand not against his temple tightly clenched into a fist on his lap, through this man’s eyes as Raven,  _ his baby sister, _ shifted into a mirror image of the man before her. The memory was laced with rage that echoed in Charles’ mind and made him feel sick.

Raven was bound by chains and sharp looking handcuffs. They held her against a large slab of metal as she taunted them, with so little slack on the chains wrapped around her that Charles could tell she would not be able to take in a full breath. It was only luck the man whose skin she now wore was of a similar build, otherwise she may have been stuck in her mutation as the chains held her from shifting. 

There was nothing useful to this memory and the rage made him itch to do something more destructive than merely shifting through his memories. Charles delved deeper and found another memory from a number of nights prior—this must have been when they first found and captured Raven, seeing as she wore nothing but her natural skin. 

Moving forward, Charles experienced a sped through recounting of the last several days— _ several days in which his sister was locked up and tortured _ —and found himself growing nauseated. Oh, Raven had always been such a strong girl. She had also been what Charles was not: proud. Charles watched in horror as she was cut open with knives and beat with metal and not once did she give them an inch.

The worst part was that Charles was only seeing  _ fractions _ of what had been done to her. He knew there had been orders for more. That there were sessions that this General was not present for. Charles did allow himself moments to sort through those memories as well, searching for any information that may make itself useful in the future. 

Skipping through the man’s memories, Charles stopped his exploration on one from only hours prior. Again, Raven was taunting the men with her words. They were the only defence she had left and she yielded them with a sharpness Charles had always admired. She was wearing the skin of the man whom Charles was looking through. After moments in which the man said nothing, Raven shifted back to her own form and  _ that _ memory was laced with the syrupy sweet feel of arousal. 

That was only a short number of hours ago, and it was enough. 

Between one breath and the next, the man was nothing more than easily caught prey. Charles was lucky that it was late enough for these men to be sleeping, and he spared barely a thought to lock the man’s jaw before he pressed gently against the General’s pain centre. The man jolted awake but could not fight the command Charles had left to keep his mouth closed. 

Grinning, Charles pushed more weight against the pain centre and watched as it lit up. The mind was a light show of pain that Charles only distantly felt echoed through his own body—he could not be so deeply entwined with someone and  _ not _ feel what they were feeling—but found that the pain was not enough to stop him. 

With a vindictive pleasure that he had never felt before, Charles pressed and pressed until the man’s heart gave out from the pain and Charles began the process of unwinding himself from the man’s mind with careful movements. He wore a grin on that felt unnatural stretching over his skin, a foreign curve to his lips.

Charles could not get up—would never be able to get up again—but he need not move for what he had planned. He did something he had never in his entire life done before: he opened his mind to its fullest extent, flexing his mutation and allowing it to spread out around him without his usual careful control. His awareness spread further than even he knew it could reach now that he was allowing it to roam freely. 

He felt every mind touched by his own; a web of his making spreading out in front of him. Charles dipped into each new consciousness and dipped into their intent. Distantly he reached his free hand up to his bare temple as his mutation stretched even further, far enough that his consciousness was nothing but a thin thread spread across the entire warehouse and connecting together each and every man who  _ knew _ what they were there to do. 

Then, that was too much for him and he gave up. It was far easier to lay himself for each mind indiscriminately until he was throughout the entire warehouse. The only mind safe was that of his sister—thankfully asleep, though Charles knew it was due to a heavy exhaustion born from pain. 

Charles had never stretched his mind so far but there was a rage burning within him that wanted to consume  _ everything.  _ They had taken his sister, had  _ hurt  _ her, and they were going to pay in their blood. There was no choices left, not one Charles cared to entertain after what these monstrous men had done. Charles wrapped his mind around each soldier just  _ following orders _ and found that he rather understood what Eric had meant all those long years ago. 

He often wondered how things may have changed if he had not stopped those missiles. 

With a heavy breath that did nothing to ease the burning in his lungs, Charles gave himself a moment to ensure he was firmly wrapped around each mind within the building before him. He felt powerful in a way he had never known, not even with the weight of Cerebro under him, and he found himself craving more. Was this how Erik felt on that beach, holding a barrage of missiles under his control? 

Charles thought it may have been, seeing as he held the lives of more than one-hundred men in his mind (one-hundred-thirty-seven, ranging in age from nineteen to forty-three). Never before had Charles done such a thing, but as he remembered the candy floss sweetness of the General's arousal at the sight of his sister bloody and bruised, Charles knew it would only take a thought before they all fell. 

_ “My friend,”  _ Erik’s mind touched his own in a caress so familiar Charles’ entire body began to ache in longing. His words were so loud that Charles could not ignore them as he had been ignoring Hank’s panicked chatter. Erik had always been so wholly consuming.  _ “This is not the way.” _

There was only so much attention that Charles could spare with his mind stretched so thin, but Erik seemed to occupy every last thread of Charles’ very being in a way that no other ever had before. He hadn’t felt the touch of Erik’s mind in too long, and he found himself suddenly torn between his mission and the familiar longing for more that had always been present around his dear friend. 

Never before had it been so easy to fall into someone’s mind. Erik welcomed him in with open thoughts that seemed to reach for him as ferociously as Charles reached back. Erik’s fingers were cool like the metal they manipulated as they brushed over his wrist, a whisper of touch that Charles got the barest feeling of through the haze that filled his mind. Still, he did his best to focus on his task even as he felt his hold on the soldiers’ minds slipping. 

A hand touched his cheek. Erik had always been so very rough, hands calloused from the hard life he had lived, in a way Charles was not. Oh, they both knew pain. They both wore scars. But their paths had been so very different. It had always felt like a miracle to Charles that their paths had converged to begin with. 

He knew by now that it was no miracle, and there was nothing quite as cruel as the twist of fate.

“This is not who you are, my friend,” Erik’s voice was a sweet timbre that washed over Charles’ soul like a soothing balm. It was so very familiar even after a number of years apart. “Please, Charles. Leave the killing to those of us who do not have a soul left to tarnish.”

With a cry, Charles curled forward as he pulled himself back, slipping out of each mind until he was nothing but himself and Erik and far too much power for him to hold. For a single moment that stretched on in the infinity of thought, Charles and Erik were one being,  _ more  _ now that they were together than they had ever been apart. It felt as though everything was right, and Charles took a moment to wonder if this utter peacefulness would be awaiting them when everything was over and they had taken their last breath. 

Then, he remembered. 

“T-they know,” Charles gasped, his eyes widening even as Erik stroked his cheek. Goddammit, why had he not been more careful? “Erik, they know we are here.”

“Do not worry, my friend,” Erik told him gently, “Raven is safe.”

The familiar displacement of air and the sudden appearance of a mind that felt nearly as comfortable as his own had Charles jerking away from Erik in shock. He missed the warmth of the man’s breath as soon as it was no longer brushing his nose, but he was already focused on calming Raven and he did not see the way Erik’s expression tightened. 

Hank was out of the car before Charles was able to focus enough to ensure his baby sister was alright. Raven was safe where she was, bundled into his arms. She did not shed a single tear but her anguish was piercing against Charles’ mind. His mutation was still too active and it threatened to overwhelm him until his attention was caught by Erik taking a step back. 

“Wait,” Charles called, reaching and snagging Erik’s hand in his own. They met eyes and in a moment saw more of each other than either of them had ever dared bare to anyone else. 

“My friend,” the term was an endearment so sweet that Charles shivered. He looked up into Erik’s eyes and easily stepped back into his mind. It felt like coming home. He watched with a growing smile as Erik took a step towards the car and bent forward so their lips could meet. It was but a whisper of a kiss, though Charles felt it down to his core.

“You have a soul, my friend,” Charles pressed the promise of his words against Erik’s mouth and it was lost when Erik opened for him and kissed him deeper. 

It was nothing more than a stolen moment. When Erik straightened, Charles returned to his mind and the next moment he blinked to find that Erik was still a step away, though now his eyes shone in the pale light of the moon. Charles offered him a smile he knew looked rather like a grimace for the pain it held. 

After all, they had never wanted the same thing, even if Erik hadn’t seen it. 

“Until next time, my friend,” Charles said into the night, and wondered, not for the first and not for the last time, if Erik’s love for him would ever be stronger than his ideals. 

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are much appreciated!


End file.
